


Wish You Were Here

by abcdefghiluvyou



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Donghyuck meets everyone in the Afterlife, Everlasting Love, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Magical Flower shop, Magical Realism, Soul Guidance, That's why this fic includes:, but there is also beauty in here:, due to:, eternal love, happiness and happy endings for everyone, melancholy and aesthetics, some reasons for deaths are:, soul bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25456711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abcdefghiluvyou/pseuds/abcdefghiluvyou
Summary: “Wait for me,” is whispered against his lips, and it’s part of an old promise, one that was given to him years ago and which he gave back in return.(Donghyuck’s birth flowers are roses, but it’s astilbes that he loves most.)
Relationships: Kim Dongyoung | Doyoung/Lee Taeyong, Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 79
Kudos: 252





	Wish You Were Here

**Astilbe**  
_-“I will wait for you”_  
_______________________________________

_If tomorrow  
brings new hope,  
I hope  
it brings you._

_-perry poetry_

Donghyuck’s birth flowers are roses, but it’s astilbes that he loves most.

It’s the flower he’s given on his first date, and years later it’s the flower of his wedding bouquet. It’s astilbes that fill the space of his home and that he plants in his garden, and it’s astilbes, in the end, that his lifeless hands are folded around, white and soft, like freshly fallen snow.

“ _Wait for me_ ,” is whispered against his lips, and it’s part of an old promise, one that was given to him years ago and which he gave back in return. Donghyuck hears loss and sorrow in those words, feels pain resonate in his chest.

There is a pull, though, and he follows it until light starts blooming all around him, making everything blur until the world he knows fades out and a new place opens. 

Donghyuck takes a last look at the life he lived and the love he leaves behind before he lets go, eyes fluttering shut as he walks into the blinding light.

❋

When he opens his eyes, he wakes up in a flower field and knows that he is no more.

Golden sunlight falls warm and gentle on his body, and when Donghyuck sits up he is surrounded by poppies swaying in the wind. He turns around, but there is nothing aside from hills of endless fields. The sound of the flowers dancing in the wind makes his heart feel heavy and full, and he starts crying, overwhelmed by his sorrow and the beauty around him.

He sits for hours in the field, tears eventually stopping, head filling with blissful emptiness. When dusk falls, he curls up, pleased at the thought of being lost in a field of flowers, peaceful and quiet.

That’s when a voice calls for him.

Donghyuck blinks in surprise and sits up, head turning around. 

There is a boy in the field, so beautiful that he outshines the flowers around him, and he waves at Donghyuck, calls out his name again and again until Donghyuck gets up and walks to him. 

As soon as he’s within reach the boy takes Donghyuck’s hands, squeezing and gently tugging on them as he turns to pull him through the flowers.

“Come,” he says, and when Donghyuck asks _where to_ , the boy only smiles and Donghyuck sees dimples form in his cheeks. “To the flower shop, of course,” he laughs. “Aren’t you the new owner?”

And… _yes_ , Donghyuck thinks, a bit perplexed. He is. Somehow he knows that’s who he is now, so he lets the boy pull him through the field and to a path leading to a small town that stretches hidden from view behind another hill. 

“It’s been a while since we had someone look after flowers,” the boy says as they walk across a small plaza. 

It’s beautiful and picturesque, and it reminds Donghyuck of something… a memory maybe, of a place like this where he walked hand in hand with someone… 

_With Mark– with Mark hyung, we–_

Donghyuck’s heart clenches in pain when he remembers, and his breath stills in his chest. Mark’s name is on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t dare breathe it out in fear of suffocating on heartbreak. In his head he sees the memory of his pale face, red lips and eyes that hold the universe. But when he tries to reach out for more, he stumbles, and the boy who leads him turns around, a knowing look in his eyes.

“Don’t think about it, Donghyuck,” he says, voice as soft as a flower petal. That’s not something Donghyuck can help, though, so he looks at the ground instead of answering, clinging to his memories.

“How do you know my name?” he asks instead, making the boy laugh, which, too, sounds like flowers blooming in spring. 

“I just do,” he says, still chuckling. “Don’t you know mine, too?”

“ _Huh_ ,” Donghyuck mutters, but it’s true. The name is suddenly in his head as if it waited for him to find it. “Jaehyun,” he says and watches another smile bloom on Jaehyun’s lips.

“We should get going,” he says and he tugs on Donghyuck’s hands, making him take a step forward instinctively. “It’s almost night and I want to meet all the flowers.”

Donghyuck only blinks at that, unsure what to say, but Jaehyun’s smile only widens when there’s no reply, dimples deepening in his cheeks. Briefly, Donghyuck wonders if he ever stops looking lovely. 

Jaehyun leads them into a main street and they pass shop after shop, and Donghyuck’s eyes widen at all the strange things he sees. 

There is a bakery with goods of such bright colour that they can’t be edible, a perfumery that smells like things Donghyuck misses and that shouldn’t be possible to be bottled into scents. There’s a candle store lit with flames that seem to be dancing for them (and Donghyuck swears that he sees them flicker affectionately at Jaehyun when he nods his head at them). 

There is a store filled from the ground to the ceiling with sparkling jars of all sizes, multicolored light streaming onto the street and filling Donghyuck with all kinds of emotion when he steps through the rainbows reflected on the ground. 

“Don’t step on the blue,” Jaehyun warns him, but Donghyuck does and the feeling of warm affection from when he walked over a stretch of peachy orange turns into melancholic longing that has him sighing wistfully. The feeling only passes when Jaehyun pulls him forward, out of the colourful reflections.

The next shop is filled with books stacked so high that they form aisles leading inside, then a gallery filled with empty frames. It’s when they pass a shoe shop that Donghyuck starts to wonder how much longer it will take them until they reach the flower shop.

Of course, that’s when Jaehyun stops.

“Is this…?” Donghyuck asks, unsure, because the store they stopped at looks dark and uninviting, no light, no sound, _no nothing_ , the shop window covered with newspaper sheets that date back a century. There are none of the flowers Jaehyun talked about, not even a sign, but when he asks Jaehyun about it the boy only laughs.

“Of course there is nothing in there yet. How can it be filled with something if you were never inside?”

At Donghyuck’s look of confusion Jaehyun grabs his hands and pulls him to the entrance, gently nudging him forward.

“Go on, go in. Don’t be scared. All the flowers are waiting to meet you. They’ve wanted a place to bloom for so long.”

The words confuse Donghyuck even more, but there is no reason not to follow them, so he reaches for the handle and pushes the door open. 

Nothing prepares him for the sudden light that cuts through the darkness of the empty store, blinding him with an intensity that only grows when he cries out and shields his eyes. He can’t see it, but the light breaks where it touches his skin, falls in countless facettes over his body before it seeps in.

Warmth floods his chest, pulls on him from the inside, and Donghyuck feels it surge through his veins and spread through his body, the feeling so odd and foreign that it makes him curl into himself. It feels like delicate fingers brushing through his soul, leaving their trace, before they reach deeper. 

Donghyuck gasps, but the feeling isn’t painful. Light fills the hollowness of his chest, wraps around his bones and vibrates under his skin. It feels more and more like the gentle touch of someone beloved, like hands running through his hair, like a kiss to his forehead. 

There is a pull that makes his heart ache, but he feels weightless, as if he’s grown wings, even when the light inside of him dims down.

When Donghyuck opens his eyes, the store is no longer empty. 

An ocean of flowers fills it with the scent of summer, plants of all sizes swaying in their buckets, blooming joyfully to something that isn’t wind nor light, and yet somehow both. 

Donghyuck feels the happiness of the plants as if it is his own, feels them stretch and uncurl and reach for him when he steps further inside, feels them shudder in excitement at feeling so visible and so alive.

“They are... lovely,” Jaehyun mutters, and when Donghyuck turns to look at him he finds him leaning against the doorframe, no smile on his lips for once. Instead, he looks a little sad. 

“There were a lot of things you kept inside, that you couldn’t express. It must have been painful…” He walks into the store, tips of his fingers brushing over the petals of a red heliconia. “But they have a place to bloom now. I hope you can let go soon, little flower.”

Donghyuck doesn’t know what to reply to that, and looking into Jaehyun’s eyes that shine so earnestly with so much compassion makes him feel shy all of a sudden. So he looks away and to the astilbes in the center of the room, as if to answer Jaehyun with their existence instead of words.

Jaehyun’s eyes follow his gaze and he understands. 

He says nothing more that night, but he comes to stand next to him, and he holds his hands when Donghyuck pulls the astilbes up against his chest and cries.

❋

Time becomes a weird thing. 

There is dusk and there is dawn, but the in-between differs from day to day. When Donghyuck asks about it, Jaehyun says that it always depends on how much time the shop owners of the town need. 

“The sun sets when the last customer leaves,” Jaehyun explains when they meet for tea in Donghyuck’s shop. 

It’s a slow afternoon and the light falls in like gold, illuminating the flowers with a vibrant glow. Donghyuck watches Jaehyun inhale their sweet scent into his lungs, a satisfied sigh leaving his lips when he leans back into his chair and relaxes.

“Huh,” Donghyuck mumbles into the cup of tea in his hands, at a loss for words as always. It’s been weeks, but the way everything here is so weirdly simplified is still confusing.

“Did you have a customer yet?” Jaehyun’s voice pulls him from his thoughts, and Donghyuck watches him reach for one of the flower shaped cookies on the table, listens to him sigh again, this time in bliss, once it disappears in his mouth.

They’re from the bakery on the other end of the street, one of the first shops Donghyuck visited after he opened his own. The owner, a kind soul who bakes feelings into his goods, always has something flower-shaped waiting for Donghyuck, and it’s always filled with comfort. 

“Not yet,” Donghyuck answers, taking another sip from his tea as he lets his eyes roam around his shop. 

Instantly, all his flowers perk up and brighten under his attention. The roses bloom a little wider and the tulips blush a little deeper. Next to them, the chrysanthemums sway when the buttercups curl shyly into them. Donghyuck chuckles and feels the hydrangeas laugh with him.

He looks fondly at his sunflowers that nod at him before they turn back to face the sunlight, watches his lillies preen and his carnations fluff up for him, all of them looking so lovely that he can’t help but coo. 

There is more, so much more, and it all fills Donghyuck with happiness until his gaze falls on his astilbes.

Like the day Donghyuck filled the shop with his flowers, they stand quiet and pretty in the middle of the room. They don’t talk to him like the others do, don’t curl or sway or puff to make him smile at them. But there is a pulse of affection, the brush of gentle fingers against his soul again, and the longer he looks at them the calmer he feels.

They’re beautiful, composed like no other flower, melancholy clinging to them like the whisper of memories clings to Donghyuck. The sunlight that bathes the whole shop in gold spins around them like a haze, as if there is an invisible pull to them. Donghyuck’s eyes follow the gentle rise of their flowery white plumes, and he smiles at the way they look like feathers fallen from an angel’s wing. 

_I will wait for you_ , echoes through his head, faint and weak, too soft to soothe the sadness he feels pulsing in his chest. It’s his own voice he hears, years younger as he makes a promise that was given to him as well.

 _Wait for me, he said_ , Donghyuck thinks. And that’s what he does, day for day for day, here in the world between life and death. He waits, while the love of his life lives on. 

“But someone will come,” Jaehyun promises, pulling him from his thoughts. Donghyuck blinks in confusion, and needs a moment to connect his words to the question that was asked earlier. 

For a second he contemplates telling Jaehyun about the boy he saw standing in front of his shop a few times, oddly grey and faded looking, always too shy to come inside in the end. But then Jaehyun snatches the last cookie on the plate and Donghyuck gasps instead, scandalized when Jaehyun moans in delight.

“Taeyongie’s so good to you,” Jaehyun pouts when he’s done with his treat, fingers itching for another and curling in disappointment when there is none. “All he ever gives me is currant bread. Says I could use some humbleness… but I hate raisins.”

Donghyuck rolls his eyes at that and gets up to collect the plate and their tea cups, and that’s when the doorbell tinkles to announce his first customer. 

It’s the boy Donghyuck saw looking through his window before, eyes always on his daisies. Inside the shop, surrounded by the vibrant colours of Donghyuck’s flowers, the boy looks even more gray, the edges of his form blurred, golden sunlight shining through him. 

“Hello…?” he calls, voice sounding faded and lost, and for a second Donghyuck is reminded of the moment he opened the door to his shop for the first time only to face emptiness, before he filled it with his flowers. 

Maybe that’s what the boy sees, too, as his eyes glance around, but then he finds the daisies, and the way he stares at them makes Donghyuck shake his head, pushing the weird thought out of his mind.

“Welcome to the flower shop,” Donghyuck says softly, because the way the boy curls into himself looks painful, tells a wordless story of hurt and fear and caution, of hiding in his own skin, curling small so others won’t see. 

But Donghyuck _sees_. 

All the pain, the colourful bruises in the shape of fingers, the hitch in his exhausted breathing… and he smells blood clinging to this boy’s skin, sees it sticking bright to his grey clothes, a pattern that keeps growing the longer he looks until he blinks and it’s all gone again.

In that moment, Donghyuck knows exactly what this boy needs, but it’s not up to him to tell, even though his heart aches to reach out and make it all better. 

Two heartbeats of silence pass, and then the boy’s lifeless eyes look back at the daisies. He takes a step and then another until he stands in front of them, hands shaking when he reaches out and pulls one from its pot.

With the daisy against his chest, he starts crying, and Donghyuck sees everything, the past of his life _there_ and the desperate search when he arrived _here_ — days of wandering from shop to shop to look for what the boy thought he had lost forever. 

“It was never gone,” Donghyuck says when the daisy in the boy’s hand starts glowing, seeping into his skin, illuminating him from the inside. He’s already fading, turning into light. “Your innocence, it was never gone. They couldn’t take that from you, it was part of you, always.”

And yet he needed his, Donghyuck realizes. This sweet lost soul needed the daisies Donghyuck grew from his own innocence, so they could help him find the way to the next place. 

The boy, more light now than solid form, uncurls at his words, stands tall and unafraid for the first time as he looks at Donghyuck and smiles. _He is so young_ , Donghyuck thinks, _so pure and innocent._

“Find peace,” he whispers and the boy nods once, smiles so wide that his whole face scrunches up, before he dissolves into light.

It’s a happy ending, but Donghyuck feels like crying, hands balling into fists as he presses them against his chest where it hurts.

“You did well,” Jaehyun says gently and Donghyuck turns to look at him, thankful not to be alone. “Jisung searched for a long time, you know? He went from shop to shop, but he couldn’t find what he was missing. Thank you for saving him.”

“Is that what I’m doing? What my flowers are for?”

“Yes.”

Donghyuck sits down next to Jaehyun, quiet when soft fingers brush away the wetness clinging to his lashes. He thinks of Jisung’s smile and the way his daisies filled the boy with light and hope when he moved on. 

He presses a hand against his chest and curls into Jaehyun’s side as his thoughts drift away, but his eyes rest on his astilbes and he doesn’t look away.

Outside, the sun starts to set.

❋

Weeks pass with no new customer, but Donghyuck is thankful for the quiet, uses it to heal as he spends his afternoons caring for his flowers and exploring the other shops of the street. 

He visits Taeyong’s bakery, and they have tea made from dried chamomiles Donghyuck brings with him. It wafts warm and homely through the shop as Taeyong tells him that he’s been _here_ for many years now, helping lost souls heal from what is hurting them so they can move on. 

“Not every soul finds what it misses in my bakery. That’s why there are many shops with many different things. Jisung needed something only you could give him,” he explains when Donghyuck tells him about his first customer.

“What happens when someone can’t find what they need?” Donghyuck asks, heart aching at the thought.

“They fade away,” Taeyong says, and his gentle and warm and wonderful hands reach out to cup Donghyuck’s cheeks. “It doesn’t happen often. Souls that come to this place have a reason to be here. There are many other places, but they come to this town, because the thing they miss is hidden in one of the shops.”

Taeyong’s words stay with him long after he leaves the bakery to visit the other shops. It makes him look at them with different eyes, now that he understands their purpose. Maybe some souls need a specific colour of light, or a candle dipped in love, or maybe they need scents of comfort and that’s why a shop like the perfumery exists. 

When Donghyuck asks Ten, the perfumer, he lets him pick one of the countless vials made of glass, smiling at the way Donghyuck’s eyes flutter shut at the scent of his home. 

“They need the memories connected to scents,” Ten says, “Some souls just need to see their most treasured moments of life again to move on.”

Donghyuck stares at the vial in his hands, chest feeling hollow at the way his most treasured memory, _home_ , to him, smells like the skin and the cologne and the touch of someone he misses. 

The shop next to Ten belongs to Yuta, and the first time Donghyuck meets him, it’s while he’s dipping candles, colour over colour over colour, until Donghyuck is sure the end result will turn out black. But it doesn’t, and when he gasps from where he stands at the entrance of the shop, Yuta turns and winks at him, all the candles in the room doing the same. 

They flicker and dance when Donghyuck steps closer, eyes widening at the way the flames change colour. When Yuta offers a candle to him, it turns bright orange and Yuta laughs, asks him what he’s so happy about and laughs even louder when the candle starts blushing pink the same way Donghyuck’s cheeks do. 

Yuta gifts him the candle that, in the end, turns into a mellow purple. Donghyuck doesn’t know what that means the way Yuta does, but he doesn’t miss the way the candle maker looks at him fondly, hands reaching out to pinch his cheeks affectionately when Donghyuck leaves. 

That evening, when the sun sets and disappears behind the flower fields, Donghyuck lights it and watches it flicker, calmness and content spreading in his shop, making all the flowers sigh in bliss.

A few more weeks pass, and one day Donghyuck has two customers who walk into his shop hand in hand.

They’re not as grey and faded as Jisung was, but the longer Donghyuck looks at them the more visible their marks of death become, and his heart hurts when he sees blood dripping from twin cuts on their wrists over their entwined hands.

“We get those sometimes,” the owner of the bookshop, Doyoung, tells him that evening when Donghyuck visits him after he helped his customers find their flowers. “Sometimes, love is pain…”

Doyoung looks contemplative as he says that, voice more musing than anything else, and his eyes aren’t on Donghyuck, looking out of his shop and down the street instead. When Donghyuck follows his gaze he sees Taeyong sitting on the steps to his bakery, eyes closed as he holds his face into the last golden rays of the setting sun. 

“They chose baby’s breath and cherry blossom,” Donghyuck says, still feeling tender after giving away such deep emotion. 

“Everlasting love,” Doyoung sighs, his eyes on Taeyong filling with longing. Donghyuck suddenly understands a thing or two about him. 

“And hope,” he adds and smiles when Doyoung blushes prettily. “Those two found a new beginning for themselves. They held hands when they became light.”

Doyoung only hums, eyes still on Taeyong, and Donghyuck stands up quietly to leave him to his thoughts. 

When he returns home, Jaehyun waits for him with tea, arms open for a hug, and Donghyuck feels instantly comforted. 

He thinks of Doyoung, too afraid to express something he contains so deeply inside himself. He thinks of his two customers, who risked it all for love only to be faced with rejection and hate until it all became too much, too painful, too unbearable for them. He thinks of himself and the time he was given to live and to love, blessed to be never afraid, because he knew that everything he gave would always be returned. Every word of love, every touch of intimacy, every promise he made.

He allows himself to feel homesick for a moment, thinks of Mark, whom he misses more than anything in this world before he tugs the memory away, close to his heart.

“You did well,” Jaehyun says, and his voice is warm, adding to the comfort of his hug. “Jeno and Jaemin, they’ll find peace and happiness now.”

 _Jisung_ , Donghyuck thinks. _And Jeno and Jaemin. And Mark. Hyung, I miss you so much. I wish you were here._

❋

Days pass and one day both the bakery and the bookshop are gone, and Donghyuck understands another thing. 

“Doyoung finally asked him,” Yuta tells them when they all stand in front of what used to be Taeyong’s bakery, but what returned to an empty store again. 

Donghyuck finds comfort in the way everyone else has tears in their eyes, too, even though they all know that it’s a happy ending for Doyoung and Taeyong. 

“He finished the last chapter of his life then,” Ten says, voice unusually quiet. Donghyuck watches him curl into Jaehyun for comfort. “He found his courage.”

“What was it that Taeyong needed to move on?” Donghyuck asks, because he knows now that they’re all lost souls, too. Maybe not in the same desperate way their customers are, but they, too, are unable to move on because of something holding them back. 

“ _Love_ ,” Jaehyun whispers.

❋

There is no change of seasons in this new, strange world, but customers come and go, the sun rises and sets, shops open and disappear. 

Things move, as everything in life does, and Donghyuck begins to understand that life after death doesn’t differ from that. 

Yuta is the next to move on, and it’s unexpected, something that makes Donghyuck realize that he can’t hold onto the moment even when time doesn’t matter anymore. It teaches him something that he should have known back on earth already: that every second is precious, that he has to cherish it all, and that he can’t take anything for granted. He has to try to make the best out of the time given to him with the people he loves, because it will never come back.

From the center of his shop his astilbes stand tall and proud, the off-white of their flowers showing the slightest hint of peach. Donghyuck doesn’t know what makes them change like that, but he knows they respond to his soul like all the flowers in the shop do. 

Sometimes that worries him, but Jaehyun tells him that change is inevitable and Donghyuck doesn’t have to be afraid. 

“You’re a shop owner,” Jaehyun simply says when Donghyuck asks him why. “You have so much to give. You help so many souls who would be lost without you.”

Donghyuck hums at that, thinking of the last customer he helped, a sweet soul named Chenle, who entered his flower shop as an old man, face lined with the hardships of his life, and who left as a young boy again, his cheer of joy high pitched and so full of happiness as he clutched a white delphinium in his hands and turned into light.

“You didn’t come here out of fear, and you’re not missing a specific thing. You’re not here to find something in the shops,” Jaehyun murmurs and his hands reach out to pull Donghyuck against his chest, arms wrapping around him. 

The next one who leaves is Ten, but it’s a slow progress that’s somewhat visible in the way the shop gets emptier, more and more scents turning into things Ten alone can smell, until one day there is only one vial left that’s labelled _Marigold_. 

Donghyuck can’t smell it, but he knows what the flower means, and he swallows, tears running down his cheeks before he can help it. 

“Don’t cry, little flower,” Ten coos at him, hands cupping Donghyuck’s cheeks like all the others do. “Who would have thought that it would be the scent of a flower in the end… I owe my happy end to you.”

And he does, Donghyuck knows. Ten found someone to cherish, and little by little he realized that this someone will keep the memory of him alive, that he will be remembered forever. He found Donghyuck, and with him a place in his heart, and that is all he needed to move on.

 _What does it mean?_ is the last thing Ten asks him, and Donghyuck’s voice is barely audible when he takes Ten’s hand in his and whispers, _Immortality_.

❋

New shops open, but Donghyuck keeps to himself, not ready to let new people in when he’s still feeling the loss of those he lost. 

He busies himself with trying to find out about the owners of the few shops that are left from when he first came to this town. 

The shoe shop is easy, he finds the owner sleeping hidden behind the counter when he goes in for the first time. Sicheng, a quiet man who doesn’t leave his shop ever and who doesn’t speak a word but smiles kindly at Donghyuck during his visit, helps lost souls find the right pair of shoes that will carry them to the next place. Weeks later, Donghyuck sees him crying over a pair of ballet shoes, and the next day his shop is gone.

The gallery is a bit more tricky, and it takes ages for Donghyuck to understand that it’s the only shop that doesn’t have an owner. The empty frames on the walls are for everyone to fill with their own thoughts and worries, always reflecting what’s occupying their minds most. 

Donghyuck understands it when one day he wakes up missing a piece of his soul so much that it hollows out his chest, only to find a picture of it framed in the gallery, waiting for him to see. 

“He doesn’t look this ugly!” he snaps, annoyed at the shop’s audacity. “And what’s with the weird eyebrows?” But the picture doesn’t change and, scandalized, Donghyuck leaves and never goes back.

That night, when he sings his flowers to sleep, he realizes that his astilbes changed their colour again, this time to mauve. For the first time they flutter gently to the sound of his voice.

❋

There aren't many unsolved things left, but the shop full of the sparkly jars with their colorful shadows remains a mystery. When Donghyuck asks Jaehyun about it and complains that it always seems to be closed, he only gets an amused chuckle in return. 

To Donghyuck’s annoyance, all the flowers in his shop flutter at Jaehyun’s pretty voice, the roses going as far as to bloom wider and tint a deeper red, while the hydrangeas stress-sprout new shoots. 

“But you know what it does— isn’t that enough?” Jaehyun asks him, and Donghyuck pouts, but thinks of the way his mood changes whenever he steps through the rainbows the jars cast on the street. 

His favorite is evergreen, but it only reflects in the early morning hours during the rise of the sun. Donghyuck likes the hopefulness it gives him whenever he stands in it. His heart always flutters weightlessly until the sun rises higher and the green shifts to yellow, filling him with peace instead. The colours he sees most, though, are the soft peach and blue he stepped on when he first arrived in town.

“Affection,” Jaehyun says with a smile, and his hands reach out to rest warm and soft at their favorite place on Donghyuck’s full cheeks. “And longing.” 

His voice is even, but his eyes betray him, filling with that aching kind of yearning that Donghyuck knows too well. 

“The owner must be waiting for something,” Donghyuck muses, realization dawning as he looks at Jaehyun, this sweet and kind soul who gives nothing but love and comfort and never demands a thing back. 

Jaehyun’s eyes soften when he looks at the center of Donghyuck’s flower shop where his astilbes stand in full bloom. Their colour changed to a bright coral pink and they look lovely, vibrant and full of life, so unlike the way they were in the beginning.

“Aren’t we all?” he says quietly, and Donghyuck leans into him and wonders which emotion it is that Jaehyun is missing to move on.

❋

Donghyuck’s last customer is a boy named Renjun.

He comes in on a rainy day, looking as grey and faded as Jisung did so many weeks ago, but it’s a different pain he carries. His wounds aren’t physical, and Donghyuck takes him by his hands and shares his favorite tea with him until the boy finds the strength to look through the flowers of the shop.

When he’s dissolving into light, snowdrops held in his dainty hands, he’s smiling at Donghyuck and he looks so pretty, so full of hope for the future again. The flower he chose fills him with all that, Donghyuck knows, and he wishes with all his heart that Renjun’s next life will be better, no matter where he goes. 

Just before he is gone, Renjun turns to look at Donghyuck for one last time.

“It’s okay to let go,” he says, voice faint. “I don’t know what your story is, but you are full of light, and your flowers… they’re almost ready, _you are almost ready_ , aren’t you?” He nods at the center of the shop, the motion barely visible. Renjun is almost only light by the time Donghyuck follows his gaze and stares at his astilbes. 

“You don’t have to be afraid,” Renjun’s voice whispers and he’s gone, his light shining on the snowdrops before it fades away.

Donghyuck walks to his astilbes as if in a trance, hands reaching out to brush the tips of his fingers over their soft plumes. The tips turn deep red when he picks one up and brings the flower to his face, inhaling its delicate scent. 

_You’re almost ready_ , Renjun’s voice keeps whispering in his head. _It’s okay to let go, you don’t have to be afraid._

❋

Donghyuck realizes that his time draws near when his flowers disappear one by one. 

They are a part of him, so they were never truly gone from his soul. Still, he feels the pulse of his carnations’ affection in his chest when they return, feels the love of his roses warm his skin, feels the bliss of his chrysanthemums spread through his veins. 

It’s like that with all of his flowers until only a bunch of lilacs and his astilbes remain. 

Donghyuck has a feeling, a weird sense of premonition whenever he looks at his lilacs. That’s why he is calm, doesn’t run like the other new shop owners when one day the whole street is cast in brightly shining light. On his way out, Donghyuck picks up the lilacs, knowing somehow that he has to take them with him.

The outside glows beautifully in the same colour as the flowers in his hands. When Donghyuck steps on the shimmering light on his way to Jaehyun’s store, he is filled with the feelings he has for Mark, his first and last love. Memories make his heart flutter as he remembers the tenderness and the innocence of his emotions back then. 

It’s almost enough to soothe the sadness he feels, because out of everyone he’s come to know, only Jaehyun is left, but today he’ll lose him, too. 

In front of the jar shop, Donghyuck sees him, smiling and crying at the same time in the arms of a man. The stranger is taller than Jaehyun, and his voice is smooth like honey, full of warmth as he laughs and lifts Jaehyun up to shower him with kisses. Donghyuck sees tears falling down his handsome face, too.

 _First love_ , Donghyuck thinks, chest feeling full from the happiness he feels for Jaehyun ( _and from the pain of losing him to a happy ending_ ). That’s the emotion Jaehyun was missing while he was waiting for his first love to come and find him.

The scent of lilacs fills the air, and Donghyuck isn’t surprised when he finds the flowers he brought with him at full bloom. 

That’s when the jars in the shop start shining like stars, and Jaehyun fades with them in the falling night, hidden in the arms of the man who holds him like a treasure. 

Donghyuck suddenly knows who the lilacs in his hands are for. 

When Jaehyun is gone, only a heartbeat passes before Donghyuck offers them to the tall stranger. He accepts them with a smile, and Donghyuck understands why Jaehyun waited all these years for him to come. 

“Thank you, little flower. For taking care of him,” the man says. Then he lifts the lilacs to his face, inhales their sweet scent into his lungs and fades with a sigh of Jaehyun’s name on his lips.

That night, when Donghyuck returns home, his astilbes have turned deep red and he knows it’s time.

❋

“ _I will wait for you_ ,” Donghyuck whispers as he stares at the last flowers in his shop.

Many weeks have passed, but Donghyuck lost his sense of time when he stopped going outside. He understands Sicheng now, who used to stay inside every day and never spoke a word.

His astilbes wait silent and patiently behind him, and Donghyuck finally understands. It took him so long, it took him witnessing Jaehyun giving away the lilacs that bloomed for him to someone else, before he truly fully understood. But Donghyuck gets it now and his heart feels heavy.

 _His astilbes were never meant for him._

He grew them from the core of his soul, and they are the reason he came _here_ , because he promised to wait, unable to move on. 

But he met Jaehyun, and Taeyong and Doyoung and Ten and Yuta. He met Sicheng and all the lost souls that came to him for help. And slowly his astilbes bloomed, and he learned that it’s okay to let go, that he doesn’t have to be afraid, that he’s ready to move on, and that he’ll keep his promise even when he leaves this life. 

Jaehyun had told him many weeks ago that he was never meant to find something in the stores, because Donghyuck had never missed a thing to begin with. For him, it was never about finding something. He woke up _here_ to help others find their way, and now that they did, he has to let go.

The promise he gave will wait here in the heart of the store, an everlasting key in the form of his astilbes which bloomed for the one Donghyuck loves. 

His time didn’t come yet, but one day he will be here, because he gave Donghyuck a promise, too, ( _because everything Donghyuck gives is always returned, every word of love, every touch of intimacy, every promise he makes_ ), and he will need the flowers to move on, once he finds them hidden in this town. 

_It’s okay_ , Renjun’s voice whispers in his head. _Let go, you don’t have to be afraid._

And he isn’t, not anymore. It isn’t the fear of breaking his promise that holds him back now that he understands it all. It’s the pain of realizing that he will go alone. 

“One day he will come,” Donghyuck sobs. “He will come and take the flowers I grew for him, but I won’t be here. I won’t have what Jaehyun had. He’ll never know that I was here, waiting for him.”

His astilbes curl in pain, but Donghyuck reaches out for them and presses them against his chest, lets his tears fall on them as his heart breaks. The flowers shudder at the sorrow in his soul, stems stretching to reach for him, fluttering feathery soft against his wet cheeks.

Donghyuck is so lost in his misery that he misses the faint tinkle of his entrance bell and the way his astilbes sway in a sudden breeze coming in from the open door. 

It’s the scent of home that makes him look up, the same scent he smelled back in Ten’s perfume shop, that beloved mix of _skin and cologne and the touch of someone he misses._

Only that it’s real this time, all of it warm and solid and _here_ , kneeling in front of him on his flower shop’s floor, disheveled hair and red lips and pale skin and eyes that hold the universe as they look at him. 

Donghyuck feels his heart stutter in his chest, his whole body numbing in shock as he stares at the love of his life. In his hands his astilbes uncurl and grow, darkening into a breathtakingly beautiful, deep red coloured full bloom, each and every flower filled so full of love that they quiver with happiness. 

“ _Mark_ ,” Donghyuck whispers, and when he reaches for him with shaking hands he is pulled close, head coming to rest at where he hears the heart he loves most in the world beating in Mark’s chest. 

_Mark._

_Mark._

_Mark is here. He came, he came for me. He came to see me off._

_“I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,_ ” Donghyuck sobs, and from above Mark’s tears fall down and mix with his.

Donghyuck feels like he’s dreaming, he feels like breaking apart at the thought of all this not being real, but Mark is here, _he’s here_ , and he tightens his arms around Donghyuck, breathes in his scent, hands everywhere as he holds Donghyuck close and safe and makes them both feel whole again. 

“I’m sorry,” he breathes, “For making you wait.” His lips brush over wet skin, making flowers bloom in Donghyuck’s soul.

Between them, delicate sweet peas start to form, their stems entwining with Donghyuck’s astilbes which start to glow, warm and gentle. When Donghyuck reaches out for the flowers, he sees that the tips of his fingers are dissolving into light, but before he can feel scared, Mark’s hands wrap around his, holding him tight.

He, too, is dissolving into light, and when Donghyuck looks up he finds him smiling at him. 

“I love you,” Donghyuck says quietly, sincerely, so full of love that it makes Mark’s eyes shine like stars. 

He looks so pretty that Donghyuck has to smile, his body filling with light as he curls against Mark’s chest and lets go. 

He feels weightless, _he feels so loved._

As Donghyuck closes his eyes, their light grows and fills the shop until it disperses through the window, casting an ocean of countless colours on the street. 

A second later, it’s gone and with it the flower shop. 

Outside, the sun sets and bathes the poppy fields around the town in gold.

❋

**Author's Note:**

> (the end notes are a bit long this time, sorry for that)
> 
> First of all, I wrote this fic back in February, for the NCT fleur zine project, which you can find [ here ](https://twitter.com/nctwayv_fleur)
> 
> Those of you who know me also know that I love plants and flowers, that I press flower aesthetics in almost every fic I write. And when I saw that there was a project out there combining NCT with what I love most I had to be part of it. “A small sweet fic” I thought. “Nothing too deep or long”. 
> 
> Wow I literally... played myself, because this fic is the most emotional(ly tiring) thing I’ve written in years. 
> 
> When I wrote this piece I _cried_ countless times, during the whole process of plotting, writing and editing, honestly.  
> The story is incredibly close and intimate to me.
> 
> But, as Doyoung in this fic said: "Sometimes love is pain." - that's exactly how i feel for this piece. 
> 
> I honestly don't know if I managed to capture every emotion I wanted to express in a way that can be _felt_ , but, I tried to the best of my abilities, and in the case that the fic did manage to reach out enough I'm glad to share some of the things I really wanted to show and tell.
> 
> As always, thank you for reading my stories c:  
> You can find me [ here ](https://twitter.com/abcdefghiluvyou) if you want to talk to (or scream at) me 🌸🌿
> 
> ❋
> 
> **Flower Symbolism:**
> 
> Donghyuck - Astilbe - I will wait for you  
> Jisung - Daisy - Innocence  
> Jeno - Baby’s Breath - Everlasting love  
> Jaemin - Cherry Blossom - Hope  
> Chenle - White Delphinium - Youth and Renewal  
> Renjun - Snowdrop - Innocence & Purity, Hope for the future  
> Ten - Marigold - Immortality  
> Jaehyun - Lilac - First Love (bloomed from the love he feels for Johnny who came to get him)  
> Mark - Sweet Pea - Bliss, Farewell, Thank You
> 
> *Please note that those are also the flowers the other writers of the NCT fleur zine project chose for the members they wrote for c:
> 
> ❋
> 
> **Color Symbolism:**
> 
> Peachy Orange: Affection
> 
> Soft Blue: Longing
> 
> Orange: Happiness
> 
> Purple: Calmness and Content
> 
> Evergreen: Hope
> 
> Yellow: Peace
> 
> Lilac: First Love 
> 
> Donghyuck’s Astilbes changing from white (death) to soft pink - to mauve - to coral pink - to red (life/love/luck), is a metaphor of his soul going through stages of sorrow until he blooms again. From faded to vibrant.
> 
> ❋
> 
> **Ah one more thing:**
> 
> There is something special about Mark. He represents two flowers in this fic: sweet peas, which are the flowers Donghyuck blooms for him, and poppies, that grow in the fields in which Donghyuck wakes up when he finds himself in the afterlife. 
> 
> Poppies are Mark’s birth flowers. Donghyuck filled the fields with a piece of his home (Mark) without him even realizing it. The poppies are part of him, too. They represent his love for Mark, whom he had to leave behind. 
> 
> Poppies symbolize sleep, oblivion and death. They are a symbol for losing one's self. However they also mean comfort.


End file.
